The May painting on my Women Reading calendar (see also 1st of each month this year) is Edward Killingworth Johnson's Summertime: Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Hannah. His dates are 1825-1896; the painting is undated, but as he seems to have been active in the second half of the 1800s in England, this gives us a wide range of things she could be reading. But it's a truly dreadful painting, soppy and vapid, and her head is at a very odd angle with a carved soap expression. I am sure, therefore, that she is a an empty headed young frivol, caught in the country, dreaming of parties and balls in Town - but after such harshness, I have (entirely on a whim) decided that she is reading Anthony Trollope's The Warden (1855), a fine novel but one that will not unduly tax her all too evidently fragile concentration!
If you want to see a much more visually exciting picture on the same subject, visit Harriet Devine!
She is possibly following the advice of Miss Prism ("The importance of being Earnest") and omitting the chapter on the fall of the rupee "as it tends somewhat unduly towards the sensational".
Posted by: Mr Cornflower | Sunday, 24 May 2009 at 10:17 PM
Mr Bagshaw at his sharpest! you made me laugh!
Posted by: glo | Tuesday, 05 May 2009 at 10:43 PM
If she's reading Robinson, wouldn't it be fun if Reginald Blomfield (Robinson's 'rival') were to leap in from beyond the frame and snatch the book from her lap (her garden is suitably informal for it to be an affront to RB). Her odd expression might liven up a bit then!
All silliness apart, I reckon she's reading poetry.
Posted by: Cornflower | Saturday, 02 May 2009 at 08:24 PM
I do agree! I am surprised that there isn't a cute kitten on her lap to complete the chocolate box effect. In the spirit of assigning her an improving book, let us pretend that she is an early reader of the truly revolutionary and influential "The English Flower Garden" written by William Robinson and published in 1883.
Posted by: Dark Puss | Saturday, 02 May 2009 at 12:13 PM